Bird in the Pepper Tree

Don't mind my inexplicable delight

in knowing your name,

little Wilson's Warbler

yellow as a lemon, with a smooth, black cap..

Just do what you do and don't worry, dipping

branch by branch down  to the fountain....

A name is not a leash.

Just two days ago a man came up to me brimming with ideas for a "bird ministry."  He wanted to teach troubled youth bird identification as a means to connect, focus, and move towards wholeness.  Without dropping a beat I said, "Count me in."  I'll do anything to get people to enjoy beauty, so that they can respond to it.  Though I have degrees in birds and they are my vocation and calling, I've never been overly concerned with their names, or teaching people names.   Beauty is beauty no matter what you call it. In fact, I have seen the pursuit of adding bird names to a "life list" detract from the objective wonder of the bird itself as the ego asserts its control in the field.

In this case, however, teaching the names to young people and helping them recognize the individuality of species is a discipline that is liberating.  Identifying birds gives them a choice to contribute as citizen scientists, and is a means to better understand their world.  Naming unleashes the wild possibility within.

Here comes the paradox.  We need to "know" names to contribute to this world, and we don't need to know names to contribute wholeness and healing.  Name it and then let go knowing anything about the bird so that you can meld with pure interconnection. 

Dogen the Buddhist might write (if he were a Birdist):

There is a Wilson's Warbler.

There is not a Wilson's Warbler.

There is a Wilson's Warbler.

What might you un-name today?

The Sweetness of Dogs (Fifteen)

What do you say Percy?  I am thinking

of sitting out on the sand to watch the moon rise. Full tonight. 

So we go

as the moon rises, so beautiful...

makes me take measure of myself: one iota pondering heaven....

How grateful I am for the moon's perfect beauty and also, oh! how rich

it is to love the world. Percy, meanwhile,

leans against me and gazes up into

my face. As though I were his perfect moon.

I've got physics on the brain, hard not to given that my spouse the preacher has been doing a series on physics and spirituality.  Just this morning we marveled at how we can change the outcome of an event by watching it.  So I think of Percy watching Mary in his sweet way.  Does Mary change?  Does she become more loving, more beautiful, more open to the beauty of herself, dogs, and the moon?  What if I were to open my heart and see everyone today as perfect just the way they are. Would this change their behavior?  Would it change the world?

It might if we all did it.

Shall we?

Dancing in Mexico

Not myself,

but Maria,

who, when her work is done,

tunes in the radio,

goes out into the garden,

picks up the front feet of the little dog Ricky,

and dances. She dances.

A Buddhist reflection on this poem might go like this:

Maria dances, I am dancing.

Dogs dance, I am dancing too.

I dance, I am not dancing.

Yesterday buildings in Japan swayed to the rhythm of the earth's tectonic plates dancing over the surface of the earth.

People scream in Japan, I am screaming.

Dogs and people die in the floods, I am dying

I die,  I am living.

My prayer today is to find a way to dance though the work is never done, to die so that others may live, and to live well to make sense of, and honor others' death and suffering.

How will you dance today? Die today? Live today?

The Poet Dreams of the Classroom

I dreamed

I stood up in class

and I said aloud:

Teacher,

why is algebra important?

Sit down, he said.....

Then I dreamed

I stood up once more and said:

Teacher, my heart is falling asleep

and it wants to wake up.

It needs to be outside.

Sit down, he said.

When in elementary school I was not much of a student.  I laughed as much as I could, ignored the teacher, and when at home, played the game to be the first one out of school clothes and outside, and the last one to come in after the sun fell. For my efforts, I technically did not pass fourth grade.  There ensued a major teacher-parent conference and I was read the riot act, "Shape up now or you won't ever amount to anything."

Well I shaped up, did well in school, and sat down through many years of college and degrees.

Today will be a day full of inside work to help those beings "outside."  I make myself sit down here at the computer.  There is great risk that my heart won't quicken today and will become sleepy and dull, for I need to be outside.

What about a compromise then?  I can be outside myself, and rise above ego concerns as just now the sun is rising over the tree tops in my back yard.

So my plan for the day if I get sleepy is this:

Sit down, let go, get up, let go.  Repeat as necessary.

How do you keep your heart awake?

The Riders

When the Pony Express needed riders, it advertised

a preference for orphans-

that way, no one was likely

to ask questions when the carriers

failed to arrive, or the frightened ponies

stumbled in with their dead

from the flanks of the prairies....

There were plenty of orphans and the point of course

was to get the mail through, so the theory was sound....

think of those rough, lean boys-

how light and hard they would rise

fleeing the great loneliness.

Some examples of sound theories:

There are plenty of chickens, so what if by the billions they lead lives of suffering?

There are plenty of trees, so what if we lose the remaining forests?

There are plenty of cats and dogs, so what if we euthanize them by the millions?

There are plenty of people, so what if 2 billion of them live with inadequate shelter, food, or water?

In trying to flee a great loneliness, we have become lean and hard towards others.   

My theory, how does it sound?

More of the Unfinishable Fox Story

Dear Readers,

I have been in touch with Beacon Press and I learned that by printing so much of the poem I might be infringing on copyright issues.  So from here until the end, I shall write only a few lines of each poem and encourage you to get the book.  It's so hard for me to only include such a small portion, because the poems in their entirety are so complete. I have loved to type each line  as a form of prayer - so instead let us whisper the words to one another through the ethernet. 

Today's Poem

And what did the fox look like?...

He was rough and smelled of skunk.

But he was beautiful,

and beauty is not to be taken lightly....

Mary is still on to that fox she saw. She doesn't remember where she was going and cannot imagine what the fox is doing on the road, but she does know what beauty is and for.  First and foremost we are to remember beauty. 

We are to remember that beauty exists.

We are to remember that it is all around us.

We are to remember that it is in us, is us, is everyone, is every being.

We are to remember that the story of beauty ever continues and never ends, so that our days may be finished in beauty.

What story do you have that is unfinished, or unfinishable?

How Many Days

How many days I lived and had never used

the holy words.

Tenderly I began them when it came to me

to want to, oh mystery irrefutable!

Then I went out of that place

and into a field and lay down

among the weeds and the grasses,

whispering to them, fast, in order to keep

that world also.

I have been on leave from my home congregation as I shift from parish ministry to my community multispecies ministry.  I don't know how many days exactly it has been since I was part of the Sunday morning ritual, but it will have been nearly a year by the time I return.  Yet I wonder if I have ever left.

Aren't we in this blog exchanging holy words?

And what about the red-winged blackbirds by the sinkhole  who squealed at me yesterday so that I wouldn't miss their fine red epaulets? 

And the red-shouldered hawks who coupled on the telephone pole during last week's morning walk?  He flew off, I hope satisfied. She remained, all fluffed and still, unashamedly content.

Their world is our world.  May we treat it holy, to keep it whole.

How do you keep the world whole? Yourself whole?